Ukraine's Agriculture Ministry has asked the government to set up export licences for white sugar in a bid to prevent heavy sales abroad, Farm Minister Oleksander Baranivsky said on Wednesday.
"Sugar could leave Ukraine and there is a necessity to set up export licences which allow us to stabilise the market," Baranivsky told a government meeting. Baranivsky said the low price of Ukrainian sugar was the main reason for possible exports.
Ukraine, which used to produce about five million tonnes of white sugar in Soviet times, had exported almost no sugar in the past five years or more.
Domestic sugar prices jumped by about 18 percent in the first 10 days of February to $859 per tonne from $768 as of February 1.
Last week the government said there were no grounds for the increase in prices because the country had about 1.7 million tonnes of sugar in its stocks as of February 1 and could cover all domestic needs.
Ukraine produced about 1.9 million tonnes of sugar from the 2005 beet harvest and had an additional 400,000 tonnes in stocks. Domestic needs are about two million tonnes per year.
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